NotCo

NotCo (The Not Company) is a food technology company with roots in Chile and New York that develops an artificial intelligence platform, named Giuseppe, for product innovation and formulation in the consumer goods industry. Giuseppe's machine learning algorithms analyze plant and ingredient data at a molecular level, together with human sensory perception of taste, texture and aroma, to reverse engineer animal-based products and reproduce them with plant ingredients. The company states it holds a dozen US patents covering methods for recreating the experience of animal-based foods using only plant-based ingredients.

The company originally commercialized its technology through its own branded plant-based products, including NotMayo (a chickpea-based mayonnaise), NotMilk, NotBurger, NotMeat, NotChicken and NoticeCream. In 2022 it opened a business-to-business unit to license the Giuseppe platform to other CPG brands, ingredient suppliers and technology providers, following a joint venture with The Kraft Heinz Co. (The Kraft Heinz Not Company).

As presented on its current website, NotCo positions itself as a vertical AI model stack for consumer goods: users generate and validate product ideas against consumer and competitive data, produce structured briefs, and then use a proprietary ingredient catalog, domain-specific models and multi-agent AI to model cost, regulatory and process constraints before physical trials. AI-guided experimentation runs large numbers of digital experiments to converge on formulas, with the platform integrated across R&D, procurement, marketing and operations workflows. The company says it draws on a decade of normalized, provenance-rich product development data generated through its own instrumented protocols and production programs.

Founding story

The company was founded in Santiago by Matías Muchnick, Karim Pichara and Pablo Zamora. Muchnick, who had left a career in finance, studied at the University of California, Berkeley and later attended a graduate program at Harvard, where he met Pichara, a computer scientist with a doctorate who had been building machine learning algorithms for astrophysics research; Muchnick persuaded him to apply those methods to plants. Pablo Zamora, a doctorate holder in biotechnology and plant genomics expert, joined to help analyze the molecular structure of large numbers of plants. Their algorithm, named Giuseppe after the artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo, initially produced a purple milk with an unusual texture that nonetheless tasted like milk; iteration led to the chickpea-based NotMayo.

Business model

NotCo sells and licenses its AI platform to large consumer packaged goods companies, offering managed services and technology partnerships, and previously sold its own branded plant-based consumer products through retail and foodservice channels. It began licensing its technology in 2022, including through a joint venture with Kraft Heinz, and created a dedicated B2B unit to give other CPG brands, ingredient suppliers and technology providers access to Giuseppe.

Revenue derives from platform-based engagements with CPG companies (managed services and technology partnerships/licensing of the Giuseppe AI platform), alongside historical product sales of its plant-based brands via grocery retail and foodservice partners.

Traction

Reported platform outcomes include 16x faster development, 11x R&D productivity and 100% brief attribute match, with more than 20 global CPG partners. Earlier consumer-product traction included distribution in more than 10,000 US stores as of December 2022, a product range across NotMilk, NotBurger/NotMeat, NotChicken, NoticeCream and NotMayo available in the US, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Colombia, and foodservice partnerships with Burger King, Shake Shack, Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. Headcount was 125 in September 2019.

Latest developments

The company now markets itself as NotCo AI, a foundational vertical AI platform for the consumer goods industry built around the Giuseppe platform, spanning idea generation and brief validation, formulation with a proprietary ingredient catalog and multi-agent AI, and AI-guided digital experimentation. It cites more than 20 global CPG partners and published customer stories in snacks, ice cream and chocolate innovation.